Whether a client wants to include a QR code in a commissioned work or you want a convenient way to promote your own business, you can get the job done in seconds with the QR Code Tool, available from the shapes flyout in the toolbar.
Ways to utilise QR codes
It’s easy to generate QR codes that perform one of a wide variety of actions. Visiting a web page is common, but Affinity can make QR codes that do other things: display a location in a navigation app, start a phone call or text conversation, share contact details, and more.
Businesses and organisations all around the world are using QR codes to connect with their customers:
- Clothing labels and food packaging sometimes include QR codes to give you insight into their supply chain and nutritional details, respectively.
- Product packaging may display a QR code to encourage brand engagement, such as by downloading the brand’s app or entering a competition like in Coca-Cola’s Endless Summer promotion.
- The National Museum of Scotland’s Galloway Hoard exhibition used QR codes to augment the experience with 3D models for visitors to examine up close on their devices.
- Monmouth in Wales and Amara in San Sebastián use QR codes at points of interest to provide knowledge about the area in a visitor’s own language.
- Printed timetables at bus stops sometimes display QR codes that connect to live arrival times on the web.
Using QR codes for self-promotion
Consider a few ways you might use QR codes to promote your own business.
Exhibiting your design work or photography? Display a QR code alongside each piece to direct people to your online portfolio, or to an ecommerce site where they can order a print or products featuring your work.
If you sell prints, maintain a connection between you and your work out in the world by placing a QR code on the back of each print.
Attending a design conference or some other event where you might form new relationships? Include a vCard QR code on your physical business cards, so people can add your details to their contacts app with minimal effort.
For print publications—especially flyers, brochures and posters—ask the client for your credit to include a QR code. The instant nature of scanning the code makes it easier to send potential clients in your direction.
QR codes for clients
Do you work with hospitality businesses, or perhaps own a homestay? Affinity can create QR codes that make it a cinch for guests to connect to Wi-Fi, rather than tapping out a password.
Let’s say you’re creating marketing materials for an event. For a ticketed event, a QR code will most likely take people to a ticket sales website, like in the band tour poster below.
For community events such as fairs, a QR code might instead add key details to a person’s calendar.
There isn’t an explicit setting for this type of data in Affinity, but the Text option serves as a fallback for encoding data that doesn’t fall into the other available types.
In this case, you would export the event data from a calendar app in a suitable (text-based) file format, open the file in a text editor, and then copy and paste the text into Affinity.
Bring property listings into the modern world. Allow interested parties to scan QR codes on listings so they can immediately check out locations on a map.
Here are some examples of how to use the QR Code Tool in Affinity Publisher:
To be more creative with QR Codes, you can sample and apply colours within your document, change the blend mode and apply perspective transformations. Learn how in this video:
Whatever kind of QR code experience you have in mind, Affinity helps to deliver it with barely any more effort than drawing a square on a page.